Run for the Cure 2012

Sunday marked my team’s 7th year participating in the annual Run for the Cure which raises money for the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation.

This year our team, icancervive, was put together in memory of my mom, Hiyan Campagna, who passed away from breast cancer in 2006. Together we have raised over $2000 this year and over the 7 years participating in the Run for the Cure we’ve accumulated more than $20,000 in funds for breast cancer research.

The Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation has a great website with information on how to reduce your risk of breast cancer. I encourage you all to check it out. (You can also check out some past posts that I’ve done about breast cancer risks, and my previous Run for the Cure recaps here.

Me representing team icancervive. I loved the shirts this year!

We had one of the warmest mornings I can remember for the Run for the Cure. The sun was shining and despite some weather forecast calling for rain, the sky was completely clear.

Our team was a bit smaller this year than normal due to some family being halfway across the world and others being on the cusp of a firstborn child but we still had a solid 12 people turn out.

Matt and I in front of the Detroit skyline, pre-race

About half of the team walked, and the rest of us ran. They changed the path slightly so that it was an out and back entirely on the road, which made it great to see our team mates as they passed in the opposite direction. This was extremely helpful this year since the volunteers who were supposed to be cheering us on at the sidelines were totally crap and barely made any noise at all (a far cry from the cheering and noisemakers of prior years). You really do notice when that extra encouragement from spectators isn’t there to give you that much needed energy boost.

Me, Vicki, and Tina

This isn’t a race, by the way. It’s just a fun run. There are no time chips but I do like to time myself with my watch when I do it. My friend Tina and I ran together and came in at about 26 minutes. Not too shabby considering Tina was battling a side stitch for a good chunk of the run (she’s a trooper, I totally would have been walking if I were her). Her brother Michael killed it in 22 minutes!

After the race we all headed back to my dad’s house for a barbecue and to watch the Lions game. It was good times.

Congrats to everyone that took part and thanks again to everyone who donated and helped us quash our $1500 team fundraising goal by more than $500! Woot Woot!

See you all next year

Matt, Kyle, Me, and the Boobies

Past Run for the Cures:

Run for the Cure 2010

Run for the Cure 2011

Fall Bucket List

Apple Picking 2011

Do the Run for the Cure 5K (Check!)

Go Apple Picking (Check!)

Make a recipe from the Apple Cookbook my friend Tina bought me (Check!)

Buy a yellow cardigan (Check!)

Run the Hot Chocolate 15K (Check!)

Hand out full sized chocolate bars for Hallowe’en (Check!)

Bake a pumpkin cake (Check! Okay, so it was cupcakes. . . close enough )

Watch one of the Husband’s students’ football games (Check!)

Happy Autumn!

The Husband coaching last year’s team

Update: check out my re-evaluation of the bucket list here

Detroit Lions Home Opener

My dad e-mailed me on Friday to ask if Matt and I wanted to go to the Detroit Lions home opener this weekend. While I have only a vague idea of how football is played, Matt is a huge fan and also a high school football coach so I figured he’d be all over a chance to watch the game live.

I was all over eating brunch first!

We headed to Small Plates in downtown Detroit, which is a small plates (obviously) restaurant near the Detroit Opera House. It’s got a really funky vibe and an interesting menu.

The drinks there were pretty impressive. They made a surprisingly mean cappucino (so good that I regret not asking what kind of coffee they used) and they even had a bloody mary bar where the bartender pours you top-shelf vodka and you dress it up with whatever you fancy. My dad really got into the mixology groove.

Dad playing bartender

The food was good: Matt and my dad’s ladyfriend Silvia particularly appreciated pretzel sliders whereas my dad and I favoured the crabcakes benedict. The atmosphere was great. I would love to go back some time.

Me, Matt, Silvia, Dad at Small Plates

Then we were off to the football game.

Me, Dad, Matt in front of Comerica Park

Ford Field – Home of the Lions

The stadium was packed. Everyone was excited because the Lions actually had a decent season last year, were playing a “crappy” team (the Rams), and were finally given the chance to play a season opener at home.

We had good seats in the end zone, 12 rows from the field. The atmosphere was very exciting and the crowd was really enthusiastic (much more so than at the Tigers game).

I know just enough about the game to follow what’s going on (4 downs to run 10 yards) and I can determine the players positions based on their body type (the linemen are the big guys, the receivers have lean legs, and the quarterback is the tall skinny one). It helped a bit.

Men in tight pants doing something athletic

It’s about a hundred times more interesting to watch live than on TV, since every pass or play looks a lot more impressive when it’s happening right in front of you. But I honestly did get a bit bored by the 3rd quarter and I was starting to fall asleep.

The Lions defense was alright but their brutal passing and the fact that the Rams kept the score tied up for most of the game made it pretty nerve wracking to watch. Not for me, of course, but for my dad and Silvia and all the other Lions fanatics.

Judging by the reactions, something bad was happening at this point (and, frankly, most of the game). Probably an intercepted pass or something. I don’t know.

In the end though, the Lions won by scoring a touchdown in the last 10 seconds of the game to beat the Rams by 4.

Matt and I in Ford Field

It was a fun day, but I was just happy it didn’t go into overtime.

Glad that’s cleared up

If you tried to visit my web page the last couple of days you would have probably gotten a malware warning saying that my site infected with some form of destructive hacker-caused disease of the computer.

Wah wah.

Sorry about that. Getting hacked sucks. I was pretty nervous about the whole situation and I hope that no one downloaded any crazy content that resulted in their computer being admitted to the PC ICU.

But now that it’s all cleared up, I’ll be back with regular posting soon. Once I can figure out what to write about aside from my disappointment with the Harrow fair judging practices or my current September resolutions.

Harrow Fair

So one of my breads won 2nd place (and a paltry $4) at the Harrow Fair!

Note my slightly hesitant smile here.

The first category that I entered was the Whole Wheat Buns category:

whole wheat buns fresh out of the oven

I thought these buns were delicious, but apparently not good enough for a prize. Whatever. It’s cool. The people of Harrow obviously don’t appreciate a soft bun flavoured with cornmeal and sweetened with rich molasses. No big deal. Though, the judges ate a big piece out of it, so they must have enjoyed it a little bit, no?

The second category that I entered was the Crusty Rolls category:

Crusty rolls fresh out of the oven

I wasn’t sure how they define ‘crusty rolls’ so I chose to make a pain a l’ancienne which has a crispy crust, as a result of hearth style baking, and a really nice crumb with big air pockets. It’s basically a rustic, artisan-style loaf.

I make this bread using a cold fermentation method which means that the bread is fermenting for a really long time. Fermentation time is what makes bread made from the standard ingredients (flour, water, salt, yeast) taste awesome, and for this competition I was going for an epic flavour profile.

I knew that I won second place before going to the fair because Matt’s aunt told me that she saw my bread had a ribbon when she went on Friday. I was really excited on Sunday morning to pick up my ribbon.

When I found my bread Matt said:

“How did they know that you won?”

I looked down at the three buns on the plate and realized that, in fact, not a single bite was taken out of any of them.

What in the actual fuck?!

If I had known that this was some sort of aesthetic competition I would have made some absurdly pretty braided roll or something that didn’t look like it was made by peasant folk. But no, I focussed on flavour in a bread that wasn’t even tasted.

Am I even allowed bragging rights now?

I’m pretty sure this whole Harrow Fair judging system is a sham show. Curiously enough the winner of the Whole Wheat Buns category (which actually were eaten) was the same winner of the uneaten crusty rolls category.

Coincidence? Hmm, likely story.

Even the cow looks skeptical about the judging system.

Baking for the Harrow Fair

The past few years I’ve been wanting to submit some of my baking in the Harrow Fair, which is like the Olympics for farm folk. It happens to take place on Labour Day weekend and I always seem to be busy or out of town. But this year I was finally available to enter the hundred-some-odd-year-old competition that pits grannys against each other in all things domestic arts (. . .and farming too, but unfortunately my childhood dreams of raising sheep haven’t yet come to fruition, so I’m sticking to baked goods).

To enter something into the fair you have to buy a membership to the agricultural society which costs $7. If you win the prize is $6. Ummm…? I guess it’s about the bragging rights? I don’t know.

Matt insisted I should enter a pie into the competition because I do make a mean pie. But the last time I made one I brought it to my friend’s for dinner and it was a disaster (lucky for me I had enough glasses of wine not to care…all that much). So, yeah, no pie.

I went with bread instead because I love baking bread and I’m pretty good at it. The competition categories for the breads are pretty slim– you mean there isn’t a category for best pain a l’ancienne?– so I decided to enter 3 breads: white bread, crusty rolls, and whole wheat buns (which were a bonus since I used a recipe that I never tested before).

The entries had to be submitted last night by 9 and there is no way that I’d be able to bake 3 different types of bread after work and have them ready by 9 o’clock so I baked the crusty rolls and whole wheat buns on the weekend and froze them and I saved the white bread for baking fresh last night.

As I was preparing the dough I kept looking back at the clock, counting back the time that I would need to get my bread ready on time and it wasn’t adding up. Shit. I performed some baker’s magic tricks to speed up the proofing/rising processes and I managed to get the bread into the oven at exactly 7:25pm.
Somewhere between 7:25 and 8:10 was the end of the world. The loaves started to get way to dark way too quickly. And by dark I mean burnt. I was pissed because I knew the crumb would taste good but I didn’t want to associate my name with a loaf of bread that had burn spots on it.

&^%&^!! @#$S%!!! $#%&#^! @#*&$!!!

I spent about 5 minutes swearing and throwing things around the kitchen in frustration and disappointment. My best bread was ruined. Ruined!

In a huff and a hurry I pulled myself together and grabbed my other breads out of the freezer and sped all the way out to Harrow and made it on time to the fairgrounds. On the drive home Matt said, “Next year you should just take the day off work to do all your baking”.

An entire day off to bake just so I can win $6? Umm yeah, that sounds kinda awesome.

. . . Want to know what happens with my bread? Read all about it here

New Computer

As promised, Matt bought Bagigis a new shiny laptop.

Actually, it’s more matte than shiny. And it’s blue which is one of the few colours dogs can see, so bonus!

I don’t know the specs or anything but I can tell you that it has all the features Bagigis wanted: it loads up insanely fast (she’s an impatient pup) and has a super long battery life so she can take it to, like, the dog park or something, I dunno.

Anyway, I think she’s enjoying it so far

Shooting

My friend Kyle is making a movie. Like, a real movie. The kind with actors and lighting and make-up artists. It’s totally bonkers. He’s already made one which I saw a few month ago, which was really awesome in the way that only independent films can be, and now he’s doing his second one.

It’s impressive to watch Kyle direct. He’s a bit of a perfectionist, noticing every little detail in a frame, and he takes advantage of every last second of time to make sure it’s all right. Plus, he has this natural ability to connect with all kinds of people (even the kind of people that would drive me up the wall) that I’ve only witnessed in a few individuals in my life. I really don’t know how he does it.

I mentioned to him that I’d be willing to help out with his project because I know it takes a lot of help and because I love helping with absolutely anything (now you know my secret and can take advantage). Since the filming has been during the day he never called on me until this week when a few extras were needed.

So, the last two nights I was given the difficult task of filling in space on camera and pretending to do things. (I say ‘pretending’ because my ‘acting’ is really quite terrible, even if my oddly high secondary school drama class marks suggest otherwise.)

Monday was a night club scene filmed at Mynt bar which basically involved dancing around for a few hours.

Where’s Waldo?

This is my favourite picture of me ever. And it has nothing to do with the movie.

Last night I tried to help as much as I could with setting up the equipment for the shoot, then I got to pretend to be reading a menu at a restaurant.

I’m ready for my close up!

It was all fun, but I can’t imagine how exhausting it must be to spend weeks and weeks filming. Much more taxing than life on the cubicle farm.

Me and the Director Extraordinaire

(All pictures stolen without permission from Beyond the Deep)

Rich Kids.

Shhh. . .

Don’t tell my husband but I’m already started to get annoyed of this whole “no computer” thing. He’s already all too excited to buy me a new one (what is it with men and electronics?) but I would rather just save the money than spend an astronomical sum on something that’s just going to let me down and disappoint me in 4-5 years in the way that electronics always do.

Right now I’m mostly disappointed that I can’t steal the husband’s computer long enough to post to my blog.

Otherwise, though, I’m happy that I have been spending more time practising guitar, baking, and reading than liking random pictures on facebook. Although it’s hard to practice guitar when I can’t use the web to access tabs and instructional youtube videos, and baking is less fun when I can’t peruse all my pinned recipes, and my reading has been reduced to novels and not my favourite blogs and newspaper sites.

I really have nothing of interest to say today so let me distract you with trainwreck of a tumblr:

Rich Kids of Instagram.

Instagram pictures of privileged teenagers having champagne showers in St. Tropez. Since, ya know, I don’t feel inadequate enough for not being able to afford a new computer.

Spray down the party. #nikkybeach #greygoose #sainttropez #party

*sigh* I’m going to go back to my cubicle now.

Weightlifting Check-Ins and Computer Issues.

This post, like my stream of consciousness is very random.

Computer Issues

My old hand-me-down laptop died this weekend. At home now I’m computerless until those brief moments when Matt steps away from his computer and I swoop in like a vulture to check my e-mail. He said that he’s going to buy Bagigis a new computer since I am adamant about not buying one right now. We spent an hour last night talking about what exactly our dog would need in a new computer and I suggested something fast with lots of hard drive space and a normal sized monitor (no Matt, Bagigis does not want to have to crane her neck in order to use the 60″ TV screen as her monitor).

So in any case, the dog is probably going to be getting a new computer soon. She’s already on facebook so this is just the next natural step.

Oly Lifts

I’m in my third week of my Olympic Lifting programme and I’m exhausted. Last week my hip flexors were more sore than they’ve ever been, a situation I rectified with a good yoga session on Sunday AM.

But mostly I’m just really tired at the end of the day. In a good way. In an “I worked my ass off and all I want to do is sleep” way. Sleep feels so good.

Yesterday when I got home from the gym Matt took one look at my sweaty self and asked me if I went for a run. No dear, this is weightlifting sweat.

So yeah, Olympic lifts = exhausting.

2012 Beast Mode Goals

And speaking of weightlifting, I was going through my old posts recently and found my 2012 Weight Goals from January. Since we’re 2/3rds through the year I should probably check-in.

Back Squats- Goal: 225lb; Current: 175lb for 5 reps.
My progress has been plateauing here. In September I was squatting 145lb. In February I was up to 165lb. And currently I’m at 175lbs. So in almost a year I increased by 30lbs. What are the odds I can increase it by 50lbs in 4 months? Pretty slim. But then again I only have to do one 225lb squat to hit my goal, not five.

Bench Press- Goal: body weight; Current: 135lbs for 3 reps.
I could blow this goal out of the water if I amputated my legs to decrease my body weight. But that would make reaching my squat goal much harder, so I guess I’ll leave my legs where they are.

I’m not at body weight yet, but I can see this happening. . . just probably not by the end of 2012.

Pull Ups- Goal: 5 unassisted; Current: A solid 3, plus a really weak 4th one.
I’m super happy with this. When I was marathon training I couldn’t even do a chin-up. Now I’m doing 4ish pull ups? Sah-weet!

Push-Ups- Goal: 100 consecutive; Current: 35
I’ve basically stagnanted on this one, but I haven’t really been doing push-ups so I can’t complain.

Olympics

The London Olympics being over is bittersweet. It keeps me from spending hours on my ass in front of the TV, but also I love the Olympics and having nothing to cheer for makes me feel a bit empty inside.

On the bright side there are less than 2 years until the more awesome version of the Olympic games: Winter Olympics.

I was ecstatic when our boys won the bronze in the men’s 4x100m relay. And then I was devastated and on the verge of tears 5 minutes later when they got DQ’d. If you were watching with me you’d think I had lost the medal. I was that worked up.

source

Good show though guys. You still made us proud.